Most importantly of all, until this afternoon we had heard no sustained challenge from the White House to either the vision or the math behind the Ryan budget, even though the evidence is already overwhelming that its implementation would immediately add at least 600,000 to the unemployment rolls and more slowly denude the entire US welfare net of vital public funding.

If we solve the energy problem without solving the population problem we will continue to infest the planet as we denude it of water, minerals and other finite resources, displacing natural fauna and flora to grow our food.

Fox's Terra Nova 8/7c finally revealed some juicy intel in last week's above-par episode, if we can believe Commander Taylor's story about his estranged son Lucas developing a two-way portal that would allow the Earth of 2149 to denude Terra Nova of its natural bounty.